Each weekday morning, I record a short audio reflection on leadership, performance, relationships, values, and what it means to show up well for the people and things that matter most.
It's five intentional minutes before the world starts asking things of you.
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Your team is always learning what matters and the teacher is often your metrics. In this Time and Energy morning brief, I unpack how scorecards, KPIs, and incentive signals shape behavior inside an organization, sometimes more powerfully than values on a wall. Measurement creates visibility and accountability, and frameworks like EOS make that discipline easier with weekly numbers, owners, and goals. But the bigger question is the one we rarely ask: what are the numbers we track training people to do?
I walk through why performance goals can coordinate effort and still lead to unintended outcomes when metrics compete. The customer service example is simple and painfully common: we say we want an incredible customer experience, but we measure how fast someone gets customers off the phone. When the messages collide, the number usually wins. That’s how marketing, sales, operations, customer service, and finance can each hit their targets while the organization still misses what truly matters.
We also connect this to revenue alignment and sustainable growth. Buyers don’t experience your accountability chart or your internal scorecard. They experience the whole organization, from handoffs to clarity to consistency in value. To make this practical, I end with two questions you can use today: pick one metric your team pays close attention to, ask what behavior it encourages, then ask whether that’s where you actually want people spending their time and energy. If you found this useful, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review so more leaders can build alignment through better measurement.
Good morning. Here is the time and energy morning brief for Tuesday, September 15th, 2026. Five intentional minutes before the world starts asking things of us. Every
organization has ways of telling people what matters. Sometimes we do it explicitly through our values, strategic priorities, goals, and job descriptions. And if your organization runs on EOS, you probably have rocks, an accountability chart, and a scorecard. But there's another way organizations communicate what matters that might be even more powerful. We measure it. One of the things I really appreciate about EOS is the discipline of the scorecard. The idea is pretty simple. Identify a handful of important numbers that give you a weekly pulse on the business. Give each number an owner and a goal, then pay attention when something goes off track. It creates visibility and accountability and hopefully helps an organization see problems while there's still time to do something about
them. But there's another question worth asking about the numbers we choose. What are they teaching people to do? Because every metric is also an instruction about where to spend time and energy. If I'm measured on the number of sales calls I make, I'm probably going to make more sales calls. If I'm measured on how quickly I close customer service tickets, I'm probably going to get pretty good at closing tickets. If I'm measured on production efficiency, I'm going to pay attention to efficiency. That's not necessarily a problem. That's kind of the point. The challenge comes when we put all of those measurements together. Marketing can hit its number, sales can hit its number, operations can hit its number, customer service can hit its number, finance can hit its number. And it's still possible for the organization to miss. Because people don't only respond to what leaders say is important. They respond to what the system consistently tells them is important. Research on performance goals and incentives has looked at this for years. Goals can help communicate strategy, coordinate effort, and motivate performance. But incentives and measurements also send signals. And sometimes the behavior they create isn't exactly the behavior we intended. Think about something as simple as customer service. If we say the goal is to create an incredible customer experience, but primarily measure how quickly representatives get customers off the phone, we've sent two different messages, and when those messages compete, the number usually has a pretty loud voice. That's what makes this a time and energy question for me. Organizations are constantly directing human energy through meetings, priorities, deadlines, compensation, leadership behavior. And yes, through the numbers we choose to measure. Every one of those things helps people decide what deserves their attention. What should I do first? What can wait? What does good look like here? What am I accountable for? Over time, thousands of those little decisions become the way an organization operates, which means a scorecard isn't only telling us how the business is performing, it's helping shape how people perform inside the business.
That's also part of what I've been exploring through revenue alignment. Sustainable revenue isn't simply the result of a sales team hitting its number. It's the outcome of an organization that shares an understanding of how it creates value and consistently helps buyers recognize that value because buyers don't experience our scorecards. They don't experience our accountability charts. They don't really care which department owns which number, they experience the organization. So here's something worth looking at today.
Pick one number your team pays close attention to. Don't ask whether it's a good metric. Ask what behavior does this number encourage? And then one more question is that where we actually want people spending their time and energy? Maybe the answer is absolutely yes. Great. Keep measuring it. But if the answer gives you a little pause, that might be worth paying attention to because what we measure doesn't just tell us how we're doing, it helps teach people what matters. And when those signals point in the same direction, we create something more powerful than accountability. We create alignment.
